I've seen a few other people recommend them already, but I rather enjoyed the low-end VPS offerings from ThrustVPS. I use my VPS for a number of different things (web-facing sandbox, if you will) ranging from web hosting for personal PHP projects to a testing platform for game servers in various configurations.

I've also found their staff helpful and patient when I put in a ticket for a problem, or via the email support system. Such a recent example coincides with a recent change of passwords I made to many of my accounts around the Internet. Well, I eventually forgot what my new password was that I set to access their client area panel, and when I entered the answer to the security question I set, I discovered that whatever I set had some kind of typo. Via the email support system, I negotiated a means of identifying myself to the staff, who eventually reset my password for me.

The only "gripe" I have is their various virtual machines they offer aren't all quite up to date. Not ancient, but it would be nice to have an option to use Debian 6, or CentOS 6 (these might have been updated since I last checked a few weeks ago).

They don't over sell their VPS's. When a server is full, its just full. The users on that server won't see terrible performance as a result. Thrust is usually prompt about setting up more servers as resources permit, but with several different host machines around the world, its not often an issue where you can't get a server near by.

I've enjoyed their service. I would recommend them to anyone provided they keep their level of service up.

You've only interpreted part of my response, and fitted in your own. Of course I understand there is a legitimate need for hacktivists on the Internet, and that many of them follow a justified cause, but I didn't feel it was necessary to reiterate this reality in my statement. I felt it was implied by now.

I for one wouldn't expect anyone to sit idly by while my basic human rights are stripped away by a corrupted democratic republic. On the flip side of things, however, I must question the ethics of my actions and others. Causing disruption to the commerce of an evil corporation by taking down their online shop for days on end, causing all kinds of financial loss to prove a point is one thing. Discovering an exploit for said service, raping their databases of all their customer's personal information and then scattering it across the web, on the other hand, is different. These hactivists have violated the implied, basic human rights of other persons, just to teach a lesson to a company. A twisted, Pyrrhic victory, if anything.

Its a grey area I just don't bother getting into, because I know the implications and the decisions that could be made. It just depends on how desperate the situation is that determines the justification for such actions at different levels.

Vigilantes have no regard for the law. The law is not their concern. Their concern is getting retribution for offenses delivered or pending delivery by an entity they do not agree with or feel wronged by.

Pinning hacktivism as a form of illegal activity will only deter kids who jumped onto the bandwagon for fun or to revolt.

I hope for his sake the SOPA bill doesn't pass, or its going to push many of these hacktivists further away. Any legitimate protection of rights online they hoped for will be lost.

I'm not saying $200 isn't excessive, it still might be cheaper than someone purchasing domains utilizing your brand name before you can, and then having them charge you even more to get ownership of the domain.

If someone knows you're a big-name porn company flush with cash, they will probably weasel every penny they can out of you should they obtain ownership of a domain before you.

That statement was intended in a pre-emptive sense. If a parent only ever introduced their child to television and video games, their child will probably not like doing much else.

However, if you introduce your child to sports and recreational activities, they will might enjoy participating in sports and stay more active than someone who never had that push.

Lifestyle is a big part of it.

You're implying that the scientists did not "[state] their opinion on the matter." They wanted to see if video games had an addicting side effect. Well, they found that gamers like to be rewarded more than normal people. Of course your brain is going to build up a desire for reward from exposing yourself to situations that always offer some kind of gratification. That doesn't mean, however, that reward will always necessarily be a thirst for video games. It could be chess later on, or maybe even writing. Or whatever that person's next big interest is.

I'm not refuting the data in any way. However, if I had to draw any conclusion from the data, it would be that constant reward instills a desire for constant reward. To me, that seems like a more accurate fit to the data, unless the scientists have also extracted data that some other area of the brain has blown up that only responds to reward via video games. Thus, I feel the results to be subjective.

As such, I stick by my feeling that you aren't a video game addict simply because you want to be showered in rewards. But you can be addicted to reward.

I won't argue that video games don't have some detrimental impact on young, impressionable minds. Spending your days devoting yourself to a diluted group of persons whose sole purpose is to destroy each other through verbal and pseudo-physical violence, or learning fictional dialogue that actually means nothing in real life, or using it to avoid doing chores and other forms of stress or work probably become a "good idea" to them after a while. The gaming and Internet forever alone lifestyle is sometimes, indeed, a more lucid reality than real life to some.

But little kids are led to believe that video games are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Parents are getting lazier and as video games cover so many different things, its easy to keep your child content with the vidya. Like most kids and pre-teens will do, they will bitch like crazy if you try to move them and make them go outside, but only because nobody put them on a track to do things outside. You can't expect someone to enjoy an activity intended to be enjoyable when nobody ever showed them why they can or should enjoy it.

"As you say, we should not try and wrap children up in cotton wool or simply throw our hands up and accept the world as it is. Instead, we should look to put 'the brakes on an unthinking drift towards ever-greater commercialisation and sexualisation'."

So in other words, the ISP's are giving parents the easiest form of parental control they can muster, and any censorship they wish to impose using this system on their children is on their hands?

That wouldn't bother me so much, but children and teenagers are going to discover web proxies and evade blocks, and a block on websites containing adult material will expand to blocking methods for circumventing blocks on adult material, and so on. I just hope this doesn't lead to a blocking of services used for more formidable purposes (SOCKS proxies and the like) just to block porn.

In one respect, I can't see this as a streamlined, highly efficient option for developers to write their games against. Some of the screenshots EPIC put of up show a clear lack of shaders, probably because they are either too advanced to keep the game running smoothly in a flash environment, or not supported.

But in another respect, this could mean quite a few future games running the Unreal Engine could very well be run much like any other application in a Linux environment, maybe dropping the requirement for Wine in some places.

Writing a flash based game engine to offer ultimate platform-independence is kind of lazy to me, and I'm not sure how many people will have any kind of good experience playing games using a flash UE3 engine if they run it on laptops, netbooks and phones. But only the future will tell.

>2011
>Fedora 15, Ubuntu 11.04, and Windows 8 demonstrate some so called "stroke of brilliance."
> The end is neigh.

Napster isn't dead yet? That's almost as surprising as Rhapsody not being dead yet!

I look at this more as a desperate merger than "omg Rhapsody is getting ALL the Napster user base!"

If even. No OEM is going to want to deal with the legal shit storm that would ensue from not offering an off switch to secure boot. Even if Microsoft bribed them to do it, it wouldn't happen.

Furthermore, if Microsoft did go around bribing OEM's into removing the off switch, governments and other software companies alike would be filing anti-trust lawsuits left and right.

There's nothing to worry about.

I suppose this is true. I just find it hard to believe that a community of gamers wouldn't contribute just to brag about how they contributed to others, or just to do it for benefit of those who also enjoy the product they translated for.

Oh well. Perhaps if Valve does reward their deeds with free games, they might consider making Half Life or Half Life 2 free. Its, what? $9.99 per license now? They could keep charging people for the latter episodes.

There are open source projects that often end up included as a component of proprietary software. Barring any licensing issues, the authors of the OSS usually don't see compensation, just an honorable mention that their product was included. Are they fools for not specifying otherwise? No. They wanted to make their work available for free so it could be enjoyed by the masses.

I'm not sure what the terms are for providing translations to Steam, but the basis seems about the same to me. People enjoy sharing out their work with others.

Its nothing new for people to contribute to translations of software they like in the open source community. You don't get anything in return, except for the feeling that your contributions will be appreciated by others who speak your language, and you get to enjoy your favorite applications in your native language.

What's the big deal if Valve is allowing the same for their games? For those who speak a lesser known language, this could be a godsend. Translations may never have been considered for their language if Valve went and had professional translations done.

The article does have a valid point, that Valve saves a big chunk of change not paying for translations. However, in another light, the author sounds butt-hurt that anyone would consider contributing to something they enjoy.